Eternal MIDI Instrument Patches Please Help

Oh man, thanks so much. You're a saint. You've gotten me much further than I was before.

I copied and pasted the names and tried the bank select messages as you suggested. The only problem was, it was still only selecting the GM patches. That's telling me none of those preset bank select messages work.

The file I'm importing does in fact have "custom messages" selected so I bet that's what you have to do for this synth.

So on further reflection, I just copied one of the multi-instrument boxes into the "MIDI Instrument" layer, and it worked!

However, it only gives me the box I imported. There is a multi-instrument for lots of things...and in the imported file they're all cabled together:

The bottom part of the screen is what I imported (this is a new "unnamed" layer it creates by the way). The ROYGBIV multi-instruments, the Mbox interface box, the cable switcher, and the "direct" keyboard.

I notice they're all cabled together - this is why I think I need to connect them to something. I notice that the Cable Switcher is on 3, and if I create a new track, it does in fact pick the 3rd box here - the Rhythm Set. But I can't get to the rest of them.

The upper part - when I play my Keyboard, it shows on the upper keyboard, and "Input View" - note the messages there - it's receiving data from the keyboard and apparently sending it right on to the Sequencer.

I'm thinking these all have to be cabled together to get to all of the patches. I don't need the SRX ones so I could probably delete them. But I bet the original creator did them as separate Multi-Instruments for some reason - and because of the custom bank messages I can't just copy and paste them into additional unused banks in an existing multi-instrument (though maybe the custom bank messages could all be copied and pasted too...).

I'm going to try a few things awaiting any more responses from you or anyone else if you get the reply.

I'm hoping it's just as simple as connecting the Keyboard cable to the Cable Switcher. Gonna try that first...

Hope your performance went well, and I used an SY77 way back when - loved that keyboard!

Arggh. Unfortunately, I still can't seem to get around this problem: Every time I create a New Track, it chooses "Studio Kit" which is the first one in the Rhythm Set Multi Instrument. I can't get to the other ones. Even if I have the Fantom patches with the proper selected output, and the Rhythm Set to "off", it still selects the Rhythm Set. Even if I deselect it in the MIDI Environment window, and select another one, it still does the Rhythm Set. This is maddening.

I've gotten this far:

Here's my Environment before doing the import:

What i just tried was this:

I imported the layer again, and manually initialized a bank in the Fantom XR one you see above (I this comes from the Apple Audio/MIDI setup window), switched to the layer one, double clicked, copied the names from bank 1, and went back to the one above, double clicked, and then pasted the names in. Did this for all the banks.

Then I went to the imported one and went to "define custom bank messages" and then copied those, and pasted and replaced those in the one above.

Worked!

All the patch names were there, and they selected all the right sounds.

So I thought I'd try and add the Rhythm Set ones - no dice - I can't "append" them to this - it replaces the first 4 bands with the 4 drum banks - and that could be why the originator of the file (which I found online after much scouring) had different multi-instruments for each one.

I also tried creating a new multi-instrument - I figured there were two already here (Fantom and Motif) and I had no problem selecting between them, so if I added a third I should be able to select it. No, doesn't work that way. Tried creating a new midi device in apple audio/midi and it showed up in Logic, but not as a separate entry like the Motif did - probably because I had to cable the new one I created to the interface...

I'm going to go back and try to "add" the additional banks to banks 10+ (as the first set only went to 9) - maybe I had something selected when I pasted and it overwrote rather than adding to. Maybe I have to do it one bank at a time.

At least I got the bulk of the internal sounds selectable!

I tried just putting the Rhythm Set custom messages in any bank and they didn't work :-(

So I know I can copy/past the names into banks 1-9, and copy/past the custom bank messages into the multi-instrument I have and have access to at least that many sounds.

I have to leave now so I'm going to come back tomorrow and try again.

I was able to paste a Rhythm Set sysex set of messages into the first slot in define custom bank messages, and then i could type over the number 1 and make it 10 and it jumped down to there. But I still couldn't access sounds. Brian is fried though and maybe I'm doing something wrong with simple copy/paste operations.

Also found creating anything in apple audio/midi doesn't work as it just adds the name to the same port so you can't select it separately.

I'm beginning to think the person who created the file I'm importing had to use separate multi-instruments and cable them to the cable switcher to get access to each one - I think the problem might be is that each one starts the numbering at Bank 1 (or 0 whatever) again...

Thanks for bearing with me.

So I spent some more time with this today.

I went back and went ahead and copied and pasted everything Manually.

I've discovered part of the problem: Logic, brilliantly, only has 14 "named" banks. You can add more, but if you initialize bank 15 it overwrites bank 1.

There are 10 Fantom Banks, 10 GM Banks, and 3 Rhythm Sets. 23 Banks are needed to access all of the Fantom's internal sounds.

What I did was put in the 10 XR Patch Banks, the 3 Drum sets, and the first 2 of the GM banks (I know that's more than 14 but using 0 there are 15 total).

That means some of the "variations" of the GM sounds can't be accessed, but at this point I'll take what I can get.

So I had to copy and paste the custom bank messages, being careful to keep the numbers organized (I found out if you select all and re-number the first thing, it will re-number the rest sequentially - finally, something intelligent done by Apple).

Then I ran into a secondary problem - whover created these included a "Mode change" message of some sort, taking my synth from Multi-Timbral mode to Performance Mode. I discovered this not only because of the light change on the panel of the Fantom, but because only channel 1 would work.

I had to disable the SysEx receive in the Fantom to prevent this. I wish I could find the message within the MSB/LSB/PC messages but again, at this point, I'm happy to have most of the sounds available.

Then, horror of horrors, I tried to set up the Motif similarly. I couldn't get it to work - If I deleted all my tracks and created a track on Port 1 (which is the motif port) it would still default to the Fantom XR Patches. Maddening. It's the same stupid thing that kept happening with the Rhythm Sets in the Multi-Instruments I was simply trying to copy and paste in.

In a fit of insanity, I hit the plus button and added a track, and lo and behold, this time it came up as the Motif. And I had complete control (I manually copied everything into it as well but there weren't as many banks).

So now it seems to me, the first track I create always defaults to whatever I started off with - and there's no way to change it. If it's Fantom (which it is) that's what it is.

I have to manually create a 2nd Track and start that as the Motif to get the Motif to work (I think the same was true if I created multiple tracks at the beginning).

But that makes me wonder if, I could have just simply copied and pasted the multi-instruments from the other file in - the Rhythm Set problem was because I was deleting all the tracks and the first one would default to the Rhythm Set - maybe because that was the last selected?

But it also seemed like additional tracks I created still were also set to Rhythm Track and couldn't be changed (when I say that, you can actually change ports and names and that stuff, but the name of the track and the patches default to the name of the "default" instrument it wants to try to use).

I'm going to go back tomorrow to see if I can get the Motif up and running.

This is why I used Cubase instead.

Here's the deal:

Logic only allows 15 "named" banks for a Multi-Instrument.

The Fantom has more than 15 banks.

But because I can't figure out, and no one else seems to know, how to use multiple multi-instruments on a single port, I've had to "cheat".

I copied and pasted the Patch Names and Custom Bank Messages for the 10 Fantom Preset Patches, the 3 Rhtyhm Sets, and the first TWO of the GM Sound Set.

There are EIGHT more banks of GM sounds I just can not access from Logic (Pro indeed). Fortunately, while there are distinct sounds in those banks, the entire banks aren't full and some are limited to just a handful of sounds.

So we'll have to use what I can currently access, which is probably about 90% of the sounds in the device (if one had expansion cards this would be even more of a nightmare).

Fortunately, the Motif didn't have as many banks and I was able to just copy and past the entire Multi-Instrument from another template project I found online.

I'm still convinced that the creator of the file I found online had to use a different Multi-Instrument for each large group of sounds, and had to use the Cable Switcher to be able to access them all in the Inspector. I just can't figure out how to get that to work, and it appears such a rare situation that no one else really does either.

So, you use two multi-instrument to get all your banks, however... if you're using only a single MIDI OUT port you will have to channel limit each multi-instrument, by clicking on the channel number in the square box.

I thought you had a multiport MIDI Interface?

The interface I have is a MOTU 828X which only has 1 physical MIDI out.

So you're saying that each multi-instrument has to have it's own discrete output?

If I'm following correctly, that means I would have to create 1 more Multi instrument (in addition to the 2 existing ones shown in my post from 8/28) so I'll ultimately have 2 multi instruments - say Fantom XR 1-8 and Fantom XR 9-16 and the one for the Motif - which let's ignore that one for now because it works and it's irrelevant at this point.

So these 2 multi-instruments - I'm going to set one to use channels 1-8 and the other to use 9-16.

But can I just choose my "Fantom XR" port that is dictated by the device in Apple's Audio/MIDI setup?

If I did this, it sounds like to me if I create a new External MIDI Instrument track, I will still pick the Fantom XR output (which there is only 1 of because that's dictated by Audio/MIDI Setup) and when I choose Channel 9 it will automatically route it to the patches in the 2nd multi instrument I've set up?

My concern here is - if I have a track and then change it to Channel 5, will it then pick up the right patch names?

I can try this in the future I guess, but right now I've got 15 banks working on 3 workstations so I'm going to go with that!

Neither logical nor professional...